Wylde

by S. C. Mitchell

  Detective Dickson confronted the sheriff. “It’s close enough to the city limits. I thought it best to call you first, Sheriff Roberts.”

  Wylde noted the Welcome to Megopolis sign down the road. They were well into the city limits, and out of Xi Force jurisdiction, according to what he’d just heard at the meeting. Detective Dickson was taking a risk. This was within the city limits. He was on the city police force. Why had he called in the county sheriff first?

  “I appreciate the courtesy, detective. Who is it?” The sheriff’s gaze traveled to the body.

  Dickson sniffed. The man was on the edge of tears. “Mac Halverson. A friend and a good cop.”

  The sheriff nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. “There aren’t many of you left, are there?”

  Dickson’s mouth tightened.

  The sheriff had his phone out, taking notes. “And he was transporting Port?”

  When Wylde had met with Port a few days ago, he’d noted the man’s brash confidence. He’d warned the prison officials.

  Port was part of Red Guard. Were they somehow involved with the change in the Megopolis Police Commissioner? A major criminal organization like Red Guard would certainly have an interest in one of America’s biggest cities.

  Shade and Z-bot stood by the overturned transport vehicle. Phaze knelt down beside Wylde, her gaze on the body. “Ugh. I’ll leave the autopsy to Heather. Do you sense anything?”

  “He’s been dead a while, probably three or four hours, and he didn’t die here.” He’d most certainly bled out somewhere else.

  At that, Shade turned his way. “Impossible. I’m watching video right now of this man leaving the prison in this vehicle with Port handcuffed and blindfolded in the back seat. The time stamp was less than an hour ago.”

  Wylde took in a deep sniff of the body’s essence. “Not this man.”

  Approaching sirens filled the air. A line of blue and red flashing lights approached from the city.

  The sheriff furled his brow at the detective. “You contacted the city police as well?”

  “No.” Detective Dickson shook his head. “When Mac didn’t show up back at the station, I came out looking for him. I knew he was on prisoner transport, so I figured he’d be on this road. I thought . . . I hoped he’d had a flat tire or something.”

  A heavy-set man exited the first police car, storming toward the crime scene. “You have no jurisdiction. Get out of here.”

  “Allen, please . . .” The sheriff held out his hand.

  So this was the crazy police commissioner?

  Wylde rose from his crouch and moved closer.

  “The county line is right there, Sheriff Roberts.” The man pointed down the road. “You are on the wrong side. Get out of my city.”

  Sheriff Roberts widened his stance and folded his arms. “I’m sheriff of the whole county. That includes the city of Megopolis.”

  Huffing, the commissioner sneered, but he spun on Shade and Z-Bot. “You freaks are not allowed in my city.” Teeth clenched, he continued to point. “Get out. This is my crime scene now. Stop muddling the evidence.”

  A group of blue uniformed men advanced toward them from the parked police vehicles, many already brandishing extendable batons, with hands on their sidearms, ready to draw.

  Moving closer to the police commissioner, Wylde pulled in the man’s essence before the approaching group could taint the air.

  He cocked his head, struggling to resolve the conflict between what he saw with what he smelled.

  The commissioner sneered at him. “What are you lookin’ at, wolf boy?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “We’d better go.”

  As they departed, the commissioner’s wrath shifted target. “And Dickson, turn in your badge and gun. You’re fired.”

  Back on the Xi-1, gloom thickened the tension in the air. Then the silence was shattered by Sheriff Roberts. He pounded on the arm of his seat. “Shit. Fuck. Allen. It’s like he doesn’t even know me anymore.”

  “Not he. She.” Wylde came to the only conclusion he could, based on his senses. “That person was a female.”

  Chapter 20

  Heather Johnson handed Wylde a pair of gloves. “Chris gave me the idea for these. I think he got it from one of his comic books.”

  Slipping on the gloves, Wylde wiggled his fingers in front of his face. “They feel pretty much like the other gloves.”

  Comfortable enough, the soft and stretchy material fit like a second skin, but he did note a slight thickening on top of the fingertips.

  “The switch is on the side of the index finger. Press it with your thumb.”

  His thumbs found the slight bump in the fabric on each glove. He pressed.

  Schling. Inch-long, claw-like blades slid out of his fingertips. Yeah, they weren’t Wolverine claws, but they had the same cool factor, at least in Wylde’s mind. “These could be useful. You say Chris got the idea from a comic book?”

  It sounded like Wylde needed to get to know Chris a little better.

  Heather rolled her eyes. “I know that look. Not you too?”

  He shrugged. The little stash of comics and toys Dove had saved for him had rekindled his interest. Paging through the old comics brought back so many memories. Good memories of Dove and him playing together.

  He’d purchased a glass-doored shelving unit to display the old action figures and hold the comics while keeping them out of reach of the wolf pups. The kids still tended to gnaw on things he left lying around the cabin.

  Chuckling, Heather patted his shoulder. “Chris doesn’t mind sharing them. Kayla has been raiding his collection for costume design ideas.”

  Then Heather’s expression sobered. “By the way, the county coroner corroborated your statement that the officer was killed before Port was sprung from prison. Do you have any idea how that could have happened? He was clearly alive on that time-stamped security video.”

  Wylde raised an eyebrow at her. “Someone who looked like him was on that video. A pity they don’t record smells as well. Maybe I could figure out who it was.”

  An idea trickled into his thoughts. Perhaps he could anyway. The person didn’t have to still be there for him to pick up their essence. “Thanks for the new gloves. I gotta go.”

  ~ ~ ~

  John’s arms crept around her waist as they stood at the little booth in the Xi Force’s underground parking ramp. Warmth radiated from him. Though he remained outwardly calm, she could feel his excitement.

  Glen Hendricks, one of Pikes Rangers, was on motor pool duty. “Destination?”

  “The prison,” Dove answered.

  The man typed something into his computer and handed her a set of keys to one of the official Xi Force SUVs.

  Along with being practical, the ability to sign out a vehicle any time she wanted was a hell of a job perk. She no longer needed to worry about maintaining a car. Xi Force provided one whenever she needed it, as part of her new contract. They also covered insurance for her and the vehicle.

  With so many of her needs met, she’d decided to spend the bulk of her salary buying some new things for her dad’s lab. There were pieces of equipment that desperately needed upgrading and it felt good to give back. She’d already ordered a new, more comfortable desk chair for him.

  John followed her as she found the corresponding vehicle in the underground parking lot. His gaze locked onto the driver’s side door as they approached. “I need to learn how to drive.”

  The things he’d missed out on growing up the way he had. Well, this would be another need she could start to address right now.

  “You can start by watching me. It’s really not that hard.” Easy for her to say now, though she’d dented a couple of fenders on her dad’s car learning to drive at sixteen. />
  They had an hour’s trip to the prison. No doubt he’d be asking her questions all the way there.

  She didn’t mind. She loved spending time with him. “Perhaps on the way back we should take a side trip to the DMV and get you a learner’s permit.”

  “That would be great.” His enthusiasm ratcheted up a few notches.

  As they drove, she did her best to explain the procedure. John seemed to absorb the basic concepts pretty well. After a while their conversation drifted in another direction. Still, his eyes remained on her, studying her every move. “You seem to be adjusting pretty well to your new powers.”

  She couldn’t really call it adjusting. “It’s more like the Creator opened up a memory bank of new knowledge inside my brain. Like I could always do this stuff, but just didn’t know how. Now I can sense and see things on the atomic level. It’s like driving. Once I learned how, I couldn’t unlearn it, and I don’t have to think about it, I just do it. Like riding a bike.”

  John huffed. “Do you think that’s something else I need to learn? I never had a bicycle.”

  That too had been denied him. Was it any wonder he’d embraced fantasy? His reality had been hell. It had to be easier to imagine himself a character in a book, than a real person.

  And that thought brought up a question that had been niggling at the back of her mind. Now was as good a time as any to ask. “Do you think the Creator is the same being as your author?”

  John chuckled. “Come on. You don’t believe in him any more than the rest of them. I’m good with that.”

  Didn’t she? “Maybe I’m rethinking it, after what happened to me. I mean, the Creator could manipulate worlds the way I can manipulate atoms. I saw and learned stuff when I was with him in his dimension. At the beginning of time, he crafted this world, and everything in it. Isn’t that a lot like what an author does when writing a novel?”

  The concept made her head spin. The crafting of worlds. Setting stars in the sky. Creating everything from nothing. Filling a blank page.

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way. In fact, I’d been rethinking the whole concept myself before this conversation, questioning my beliefs. I so want you to be real. Us to be real.”

  Her core quivered as she recalled how she’d felt after making love with John. “Oh, we’re real all right.”

  He snickered. “So, let’s run with this. If that Creator is the author, who is the destructor?”

  This is one of the things she absolutely loved about John. The way his mind worked, questioning constantly even as a youth. When they were together they could suspend reality, and really dig into concepts, even fictional ones. They’d had some amazing conversations and debates as kids that had helped shape her inquisitiveness and love of science.

  “If the creator is the author, would the destructor be the editor?” It kind of fit. The creator made things, the destructor tore them apart, causing the creator to remake them better.

  She’d once worked with an editor on a journal article she’d written. That woman had had no mercy, continually cutting and forcing Dove to rework every aspect. But in the end, the piece had been so much better.

  “So what about those other beings? The ones that forced the Creator and the Destructor back to their dimensions. How do they fit into this scenario?”

  Right on queue. Just about the time she was starting to wrap her mind around a concept, John would throw in a monkey wrench. Perhaps he was her editor. He caused her to really think things through, and sometimes change her mind. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  And then the prison walls came into view. “We’re here,”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wylde sniffed, pulling in the smells of the room. The transfer garage at the edge of the prison grounds contained a multitude of essences. He sorted and filtered, locking on to the smoky scent he recognized. This was where Port had been loaded into that police vehicle.

  Dove stood by the door, playing the part of a Xi Force currier assigned to drive him about. Aaron refused to let her suit up in the field until Paul Tompkins certified her ready.

  Wylde was good with that. Her costume would make her a target. There was no need for her to put herself in any danger at this point.

  Nose to the ground, he followed the Port’s trail from the doorway to where the vehicle had been. As he expected, Officer Halverson’s essence was nowhere to be found in the garage. But there was one other essence he recognized. “Has Commissioner Warren been here recently?”

  The prison official assigned to them typed something into a computer terminal. “He’s not in the data base, and this system was installed seven years ago, so no, he hasn’t been here in that time.”

  No, he hadn’t been here, but she had. The woman everyone thought was Commissioner Warren must have also been impersonating Officer Halverson here to pick up Port. Completely different builds, and both male despite the fact that she is definitely female. No doubt a master of disguise or possibly a shape shifter, but unmistakably the same person Wylde had sniffed just a few hours earlier at that crime scene. So where was the real commissioner?

  ~ ~ ~

  Forms filled out, his identity confirmed, Wylde was the proud owner of a brand new learner’s permit to drive an automobile. “If we weren’t in such a hurry, I’d ask you to let me drive back to the base.”

  But he doubted he’d feel safe driving much over twenty miles per hour. Now was not the time to take any chances.

  Still, he’d texted the information and his theories about Commissioner Warren back to Xi Force headquarters.

  Yeah, he’d texted. He’d even figured out how to send the text to both Aaron and Joel at the same time. He needed to start mending fences with Aaron. His world was changing, expanding. No time like the present to take the next step. Maybe he should ask to drive home.

  As he tucked the new permit into his pants pocket, Dove slid her arms around his waist from behind and nibbled his earlobe. “Once we get back, I’ll let you do another kind of driving. You know, we’ve got that other learner’s permit to work on.”

  Dove’s hot tone set his cock pulsing.

  Okay, even thirty miles per hour wasn’t going to cut it now and with thoughts of her suggestions spinning through his mind, he’d probably crash into something. Dove could drive. The sooner he got her back into his bed, the better.

  He took her hand and pulled her out of the building toward their vehicle.

  “How about we try to overheat the author’s computer this time.” What kind of effect would that have on the universe?

  “A worthy goal if I ever heard one.” Dove used the key remote to open their vehicle’s doors, then slid into the driver’s seat as Wylde entered the other side.

  The trees flew by in the window as his mind whirled with possibilities.

  Dove’s palm slapped the steering wheel, drawing his attention. “Readers. The other beings are readers.”

  “What?” Wylde reigned in his erotic thoughts, trying to pull his mind back to their earlier conversation.

  Dove’s eyes sparkled, her luscious mouth widened into a broad grin. “Think about it. When the story is told, the book is written, it’s the reader who’s in charge. The creator and the destructor, the author and editor, are locked away in their own dimensions, unable to further change the world they created. It’s the reader that judges the course of events and has ultimate power to read or not read.”

  “You’re not really buying into this, are you?” He wasn’t even ready to take it this far.

  She chuckled. “No, but it’s so fun to take a concept as far as we can. I always loved that about you, John. You’d go with me, no matter how far-fetched an idea we came up with.”

  Yeah, they’d had some doozies. Unicorns, the Illuminati, magic. Fuel for the fantasy worlds he’d
escape into when his father made things hurt.

  They’d been so close then, and were so close again.

  And he wasn’t afraid to say it. “I love you, Dove. I think I always have.”

  Chapter 21

  An icy blast hit Dove the moment she stepped onto the snow-covered lawn in front of the Xi Force headquarters mountain. Snowflakes swirled around her. A chill invaded her extremities.

  She upped the friction on the air molecules around her body and warmed right back up. Kayla had offered to add a thermal layer to her costume for the frigid temperatures, but Dove declined. She didn’t need it.

  Paul Tompkins stood in front of four shivering recruits. “Today you get to meet the newest Xi Force member. Welcome, Quantum. She’s weak, ineffectual, it’s our job to get her in shape.”

  Paul’s gaze swept to her, and he shot her a wink.

  The cad. She rolled her eyes at him as she took up her position.

  But she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the four newest members of Pike’s Rangers. Yes, this was training for her. But it was also a test for them. The rangers were an elite group, drawn from all branches of the service. The best of the best. Paul had been recruiting to fill the ranks after the devastating explosion that killed over two dozen men including their leader, Jason Pike a few months ago. Many of the survivors had been so wounded they couldn’t return to duty. Only eight of the original rangers were still active, and Paul was now in charge of beefing up their ranks.

  Well, there was some beef here. Hard to tell under their winter gear, but her friends, Mary and Maggie, had been sending her reports on the new recruits. Which ones they thought wouldn’t make the cut, and which ones they thought looked the hottest.

  There were some fine looking, incredibly in-shape guys among the ranks, and man, did these guys like to flirt. Mary and Maggie loved it, but Dove only had eyes for John.